26 Hartley Burr Alexander 



of Albion. Hereafter we cannot speak of a Celtic poetry and a 

 Saxon poetry, but only of an English poetry. Yet in this Eng- 

 lish poetry we may continue to discriminate a Celtic from a 

 Saxon mode, for in our study of origins we have come clearly 

 to understand what each of these modes denotes. Just as all 

 poetic insight instinctively finds first expression in the luminous 

 mode, so the peculiar insights arising from the commingled 

 ethnic strains seek expression in the modes anciently native to 

 each. But because the blood, long-fused, has become one, any 

 discrimination of mode must henceforth be understood as made 

 only for criticism and significant only for kiwzvledge; there is 

 not meant to be any scalpular analysis of the organization either 

 of poet or poetry. 



The truest expression of the folk-soul of any race, especially 

 since the development of culture-tradition and the accustomed 

 contacts of civilizations, is to be found in its people's poetry — 

 in the songs and ballads of the tavern and the farm-stead. So 

 with the English. Throughout the Dark Ages fusion was slowly 

 wrought, begun, as was natural, and first completed in the lower 

 strata of society. Literature during the period betook itself 

 perforce to the shelter of the monastery; later, with the advent 

 of the Norman, to the patronage of the Court. But monkish 

 belles-lettres, after the Saxon era, comprised little beyond Latin 

 hymns, not over-delicate, or, in English, such dreary monodies 

 as the Ormulum of Orm; and the poetry of the Court under the 

 early Plantagenets was exotic importation from the land of the 

 trouvere. Not until the Thirteenth Century pre-Renaissance 

 renascence was there produced a real English poetry. The 

 early revival culminates in Chaucer. Thereafter a lapse during 

 the Wars of the Roses, and then the sudden glories of the great 

 era. But the literature composed under Elizabeth was more 

 than a folk-literature. Classic culture, Italian and Greek, 

 entered in to complicate its character. The blood of the race 

 shows not less red and vigorous ; we perceive the native element 

 not less surely; but for wholly untaught manifestation, we must 

 look elsewhere. 



During all these periods, nighest the heart of the people, was 



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